COVID-19 has damaged the international tourism industry in an unprecedented way. China’s tourism industry has also faced its severest challenge since the reform and opening-up. Thankfully, governments of all levels have issued various supporting policies for enterprises in the tourism industry, which has helped troubled businesses and stabilized the market, said Song Rui, head of the Tourism Research Center under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS). He spoke at a recent press conference for the release of the report China’s Tourism Development: Analysis and Forecast (2019–2020), aka Green Book of China’s Tourism. The report was jointly released online by the National Academy of Economic Strategy under CASS, the Tourism Research Center under CASS and Social Sciences Academic Press.

The report highlighted ten trends in China’s tourism industry in 2019, including the institutionalization and systemization of the construction of national parks, the availability of more night travel activities, and new regulations dealing with disorderly behaviors in the industry.

The 2020 Green Book has included a special topic—“China’s Tourism Industry Amid the Pandemic.” This new section analyzed the developments of the industry during the pandemic and its future prospects from various angles including impact assessment, coping strategy and listed companies in the industry.

Song suggested that we need to pay attention to the long-term, international and indirect impacts that COVID-19 has had and will have on the tourism industry. We need to be rational about the post-pandemic rebounds in the market. We need to look at how the pandemic is going to affect, in the next few years, the global economic pattern and tourism pattern, China’s position in the global tourism industry, and the development pattern of the industry. This needs to be reflected in the country’s Fourteenth Five-Year Plan.

Apart from the direct impacts, we also need to look at the indirect ones. To be specific, we need to evaluate how the pandemic affects people’s income, medical expenses and employment, etc. For instance, if the pandemic leads to great fluctuations in the financial market and induces pessimism in the capital market, tourism investment would shrink, and countless projects under construction or awaiting construction may end up unfinished.

To deal with the impacts of the pandemic, the Green Book makes the following four suggestions.

First, carry out a new round of reform and opening-up and high-quality development in the tourism industry.

Second, strengthen, improve and specify policies. Increase policy support and specify the priorities of policy support, ensuring that the support mainly goes to small and medium-size enterprises while stabilizing the job market.

Third, enhance guidance in the post-pandemic tourism market. Make use of big data for specialized analysis of work resumption in the industry, and enhance testing and warning in key areas.

Fourth, lead the job market in the tourism industry towards more stabilized and standardized development.